


Calcutta Again

by Reinette_de_la_Saintonge



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Family, Fever Dreams, Gen, Illness, Loss, Teenage Simcoe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 14:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11533929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reinette_de_la_Saintonge/pseuds/Reinette_de_la_Saintonge
Summary: A teenage Simcoe walks through the streets of Calcutta, but nothing is as it seems...





	Calcutta Again

**Author's Note:**

> My second fic for Simcoe. Somehow, I have always had some doubts when it comes to Simcoe's Calcutta-narrative, so here is my attempt at explaining why and how it is and isn't real at the same time. 
> 
> It is a very, very loose follow-up (there are one or two small allusions to it in the text) to my first Simcoe-centred story, "Brothers in Arms", but it reads just as nicely on its own.
> 
> For more notes, historical background etc., check the end notes.
> 
> Enjoy!

Sunshine burns mercilessly on his skin and the humidity in the air was almost unbearable for someone who is not accustomed to the climate of the Indian subcontinent, but he does not feel tired or exhausted at all.

The weather conditions are merely noted in that they _exist_ , and are not _felt_ , for physical discomfort, especially of the abstract, never self-encountered kind seldom manifests in dreams.

Light-footedly, he walks through the streets of Calcutta, the air exhilaratingly rich with the scent of curry and other spices even his conscious self cannot name; street vendors offer strange fruits for him to taste and buy, others hold up brightly-coloured fabrics or gold jewellery bigger and more intricately worked than anything he has ever seen. Somewhere in the distance, an Elephant carrying a man seated under a baldachin passes by, accompanied by marching men in turbans and armed with polished talwars.

In a cage next to him, a popinjay cackles in the perfect imitation of a human child; a little boy, by the looks of it the owner of the brightly coloured bird, starts to giggle, his voice the exactly same timbre and intonation as the popinjay’s, and feeds the animal a nut through the bars.

As often happens in dreams, while some things appear upon conscious reflexion sketch-like and unfinished, lacking detail, some images of the nightly vision prevail, linger in almost life-like vividness on the dreamers mind:

A group of young women, some dressed in colourful saris, the traditional Indian dress somewhat similar to the toga of an ancient roman senator, only a lot more becoming wrapped around dainty shoulders and a svelte figure with delicate limbs than the swollen belly of a fat, old roman, and some in plendorous robes de court pass him by. Their heads turn after the fiery-haired youth and they smile mysteriously from below long eyelashes, their dark eyes, some black, some hazel, some amber-speckled agleam with something inexplicable he finds himself unable to understand, strands of dark hair of varying shades floating in the wind in perfect movements.

Dazzled not by the splendorous sparkle of their costly jewellery, the girls are a later addition to the dream that has kept returning to him since he counted seven years of age, the bashful product of the imagination of a boy on the verge of manhood, the manifestation of a cryptic ideal of female beauty sculpted and assembled from marble-esque morsels of hearsay, broadsheets, novels, some other boy’s boastful tales and Catullus' _Carmina_.

Although a part of him welcomes them and their intriguing presence, fear overcomes him whenever the girls pass him by, sent by the last bastion held by his conscious mind even when asleep, knowing this dream by heart and knowing what is to come now will change everything.

When the last skirt or sari has brushed past his thigh and he walks on, marvelling at the startling sight that only seconds ago has graced his eye, a figure comes into view at the crossroads ahead of him:

A man, dressed in the blue coat of a navy officer. His father. How he knows the man is his indeed his father, he is not certain; he was too young when he died, too young to accurately remember the distinguishing features of his face. Most things he knows about his father passed to him like heirlooms, memories that aren’t his, strange yet familiar at the same time. In his memory, some shadowy image of a man exists, of horseback riding, the recital of historical information to him at Fotheringhay Castle about a long-dead dynasty.

However hard he tries, he is unable to find a picture of his father’s face in his memory that does not stem from the Dream, a picture he can trust. There is none, save some attempted reconstructions from distant childhood memories threadbare from forcefully remembering them over and over again added to what his mother told him about her late husband.

He wonders if it is even possible to remember someone accurately, if not time softens the features of even the harshest man, if not death colours the cheeks of a child taken prematurely from this world more rosy than they were in life-

The dead child. Percy.  

Suddenly, the scenery shifts. Five or six years ago, on a beautiful summer day, Percy’s little heart had stopped beating abruptly.

They were returning from a weekend spent at the house of some distant relative when all of a sudden, the carriage wheel broke on the way home. They had both been much annoyed and Mother had allowed them to go and play on the banks of the nearby river Exe to distract themselves from the mishap and keep themselves occupied while the coachman was about to fetch help.

Mother had tried to keep the horses, two quite temperamental beasts, from running away. Not wanting her children anywhere near the quite possibly dangerous animals, she must have been relieved they had tottered off to play by the water.

And then, Percy had leaned over the water’s edge a little bit too far, maybe he had seen a stupid fish or something or other and fallen in. It was not his fault. He had screamed, loud and fearful, “John, help me, John”- but what could he have done? One moment of inattentiveness had been enough and Percy was already disappearing beneath the surface. Mother had come, tried to reach out for her youngest son but could not get to him while he had stood, petrified like Lot’s wife, and watched on, unable to do or say anything.

Even Mother was helpless against the river and its current and Percy’s soon lifeless body was washed downstream. Distraught, she had waded into the water, but she couldn’t swim either. She was left with the choice between her two sons, either to join the apathetic youth on the shore or the drowning boy in the cold floods of the Exe, knowing she would likely never resurface again. With a heavy heart, she had chosen to live with her son on dry land, rather than drown with the other.

Safe on dry land again she, distraught and teary, had flung herself into his arms and cried “Where were you, John? Why didn’t you help him? If _you_ had-”

These words, spoken in distress, had haunted him ever since, even if Mother, probably guilt-ridden for blaming her youngest son’s death on the eldest for lack of other culprits, a mere child himself, did all she could to make him forget she had ever spoken these hurtful words to him. She tried to make him forget under layers of overabounding shows of affection and presents, but whenever she laid her arms around him, telling him he was her “only one”, her “dearest treasure”, he had turned to stone in her embrace, the words she was trying to erase from his memory engraving themselves more deeply on his mind with every single of her clumsy attempts. 

Sometimes, he wished he had drowned. Or she. It wouldn’t have mattered.

Percy had been the first body he had seen when some local men had recovered the lifeless boy from the water a mile downstream. Cold, pale, blue, leaves and dirt from the riverbed all over him.

Funny how fate had decided to kill Percy where his father had been buried, in the water.

The scenery is changing again; he looks on, as dreams sometimes permit, how his own younger self is held face down into a tub, other boys cheering, ruffling his hair, laughing. Having obviously taken inspiration from their class on Shakespeare’s _Richard III_ earlier that day, his "murderers" only deviate from the play in that they don’t have Malmsey wine at their hands and have to make do with dirty bathwater instead.

Later he had learned it had only been a hoax, a stupid prank. But how could he have known then, his head dunking in and out of the water in irregular intervals? He had not told his comrades of his brother’s death by drowning and could not afterwards, when they had released him and asked him why he was shaking so; they had never meant to harm him, it was all a joke.

He knows that now, but the childhood self he is watching does not yet and fights for his life. Even though he is a mere onlooker, he feels what the boy in the tub feels; his lungs tighten with lack of air, desperate to breathe and a violent coughing fit escapes his mouth, leaving him no time to gasp for desired essence of life.

 

For a moment, he fancies himself in a room he recognises, lying in bed, but in the next, he is in Calcutta again. No longer does he roam the streets of this enigmatic city, he is in a dungeon, a narrow cell and his father is there, too. It’s hot. The smell of vomit, urine and human excrement bites his nose, the air so thick from having been breathed in and out over and over again one could cut it with a knife, no room to move, no possibility to escape. Men and women wail, plea, pray, scream. They’re at the mercy of their captors, mercy the inmates of the Black Hole of Calcutta will not get. It is the 20th of June 1756 and 123 of the 146 prisoners are going to die, suffocate in this outpost of hell.

He tries to draw breath and coughs, coughs, more air exiting his body than is entering. He turns around to his father, only to see that he does no longer move; his empty eyes stare at him with the echo of long faded hope. He cannot take his eyes away as dread tightens his chest even more-

Everything fades to black, a dimensionless, shapeless black that encompasses him like a blanket warming him, erasing all thoughts from his mind.

It is comforting not to feel anything.

 

Spots of light penetrate the darkness of his eyelids. The light grows brighter the longer he lies there, contemplating if he should try to move his limbs or not. He has survived Calcutta.

He opens his eyes, blinking irritateldly due to the sudden brightness of the room around him.

“Mr Simcoe? Can you hear me?” The voice of a man asks insistently. He tries to answer, but all that his sore, dry throat is able to produce is a hoarse groan. It seems to be sufficient for the man to assume he is conscious and well enough to endure the company of fellow human beings again after his ordeal.

“You were unconscious for days and burning. Not many men would have survived a fever as raging as yours.”

And then he realises. He isn’t in India, he is in England. In Exeter, in the rooms of the home he had until one day two years ago shared with his mother, who is dead as well, having succumbed to an illness.

Calcutta. He has never been there. Father had told him of Calcutta, of the marvels of India, gems the size of dove’s eggs, exotic spices, wondrous animals that were so unlike the drab grey forest creatures of England, of the temples and of strange, many-handed gods and holy cows, of everything he knew. Father hadn’t been to India either, but it had been his dream to go one day, his longing to see this strange land fuelled by the tales of those who had been there.

A young John, he remembered, had been fascinated with his father’s tales and vowed to accompany him to India one day. With his father’s death, the idyllic fantasy of an Indian palace with tame tiger cubs for company and the sound of strange music echoing through the halls had changed to the exact opposite, overrun by the faceless hordes of a helplessness that only intensified the more he thought about it, cultivated over time and fuelled by loss.

 Tired, he closes his eyes again, the pictures are too vivid. He tries to forget, but he cannot. Calcutta is still on his mind.

 

The days of his recovery are spent reading, half-sitting against a plenitude of cushions, poetry, history, whatever takes his fancy. His godfather has been so good as to present him with some books, knowing he has always been an avid reader and wishing to aid his recovery. It is a whole boxful the Admiral has sent him and he is thankful: The more he reads, the more accounts of other people’s lives he indulges in, the less he has to think about his own.

On the bottom of the wooden crate a thin volume awaits him beneath a battered copy of Milton’s _Paradise Lost_ , a publication called _A Genuine Narrative of the Deplorable Deaths of the English Gentlemen and others who were suffocated in the Black Hole_ by John Zephaniah Holwell, a surgeon at Fort William who survived the Black Hole of Calcutta. It intrigues him to finally hold a genuine account of this event in his hands, not some second-hand memory printed somewhere in a big encyclopaedic volume, no better in its accuracy than his second-hand memories of his father.

It is less than sixty pages long, but it takes him the longest to read of all things Admiral Graves has sent him. No volume of obscure poetry, no almanac of great battles affects him like the account of the survivor of the Black Hole.

And slowly, it begins to dawn on him that he doesn’t need to have been to Calcutta to feel it. The hell of Calcutta is as real to him as it was to Holwell, cramped into a tiny prison cell with countless other unfortunate souls. Calcutta is his nightmare as much as the surgeon’s, just differently.

The Black Hole of Calcutta is deep inside him, the place where all his anger is buried, confined until it breaks out of him like a roaring beast, a dragon, ready to scorch everything in its path. Sometimes he is scared of it, scared to see what lurks in the dark, but on most days, he pretends to be indifferent to it.

Calcutta is within him, the Black Hole a pit where he buries the pain, the hurt, the helplessness he cannot grasp or describe, where he deliberately smothers his feelings to obtain the soothing dark apathy again that has enwrapped him during the twilight of his fever after the recurrence of the Nightmare.

Nightmare? He has not survived the same illness that killed his father to be haunted by the ever-returning nightmare of Calcutta.

He determines that he will no longer be frightened. He has no fears. He has conquered death. Now, he can conquer everything else.

 

It is then that Calcutta becomes the lie he tells to people when they ask about his family.

He cannot remember when and to whom he first told this fabrication, but he remembers he was scared of himself at first, scared and amazed how easily this lie comes to him, yet there it is at the tip of his tongue, the cruelty of Calcutta much easier to bear than the farewell-less farewell eleven years ago. There had not even been a body to bury because the men had discarded his father's lifeless form without the dignity of a decent burial in the ocean.

Calcutta is easier to endure, there is a body to bury, a man to be mourned. He has heard himself claim he was ten when he watched his father die- he was four years old in 1756, but nobody puts trust in a toddler’s memories. He was seven when his father died at sea, but seven is, to his experience, still not old enough to have gathered reliable memories of a person. So he claims he was ten, ten and watching his father die.

The lie manifests, becomes a story he can retell in his sleep if asked to, the words never changing much. Sometimes, the numbers vary; on some days, his father was put into a cell with forty other Englishmen, on others, he adds twenty more. What never changes however is the mercy his father is shown: none.

He can never save Father, a little boy against all these armed grown men who don't even speak his language and those who could save him and the other prisoners, perhaps the Nawab of Bengal who commands these men, don't.

Mercy? Has life shown him any mercy so far? His studies at Oxford abandoned due to ill health, his family dead? Mercy is for the weak, he will no longer pray and hope as the weak do, pray that his father's death is a misinformation, hope seeing Percy drown was only a nightmare.

He deems his heart hardened, strong and determined and presents himself in the same manner, a man now at almost eighteen, a man no longer willing to sit idly by.

The offer of an ensign's commission in the army comes at the right time. Once he has regained some physical strength, he is determined to join the Royal Army.

 

 

He keeps adding to the lie as time progresses, tells of having been stationed in Guyana and the Caribbean, watching the shock on people's faces when he informs them of his mission to fight the enemies of the Crown, men like those who killed his father.

The fear in their eyes excites him, gives him a sense of power. With every time he retells this story, Calcutta becomes more real, until one day, he doesn't question the narrative anymore.

The Black Hole of Calcutta, once the fabrication of a young boy's mind, has become reality.

 

On some nights, he can even hear the desparate cries of those encarcerated there, as vividly as if he had witnessed it only yesterday and not as a boy of ten.

**Author's Note:**

> Historically, Simcoe was born and raised in England, which was changed to India on the show, something that always baffled me a bit since that deleted scene in season one. So his backstory was first altered and then not featured anyway? So is it important or not?
> 
> When his childhood in India resurfaced again this season, I was tempted to write this piece. 
> 
>  
> 
> In real life, Simcoe lost his entire family over the course of eight years, his father when he was seven, his brother at twelve, and his mother at fifteen. 
> 
> The causes of death are, in the cases of Captain John Simcoe (his father) and Percy historically correct, though the scenario regarding the circumstances of Percy's tragic demise have been drawn up by me due to lack of information.  
> I could find nothing on Katherine Simcoe's cause of death, so I settled for a severe illness as the most likely and plausible cause. 
> 
> Please also be aware that my representation of Calcutta in the 1750s does by no means try to be historically accurate; as a dreamscape, it is supposed to be an imaginary construct that does not necessarily mirror historical reality. 
> 
> Digging into Simcoe's biography, I read that he was actually a very good (though not exceptional) student, was good at sports and well-liked by his fellow students. He is also said to have enjoyed poetry in both English and Latin, as well as books on history's greatest battles and modern history (modern in the context of his lifetime, of course), hence he might have stumbled over the Black Hole of Calcutta somewhere before. 
> 
> Simcoe also attended Merton College, Oxford for a year when he was sixteen, but he never graduated and it has been assumed that he had to give his studies up due to ill health, a manifestation of which you get to see in this story.
> 
> The Black Hole of Calcutta existed, as does the account of events on 20th June 1756 mentioned in the story, although the accuracy of it is debated with regards to the number of prisoners (something that is also mirrored in the story).
> 
> I chose for Simcoe to suffer from pneumonia of all illnesses because both his father and, if I recall correctly, one of his daughters died as a result of contracting said illness. From there, it was only a small leap to assume that, given these circumstances in connection with his ill health as a teen, maybe there was a hereditary susceptibility to respiratory illnesses in the Simcoe family, if one takes the availability of medical assitance and supplies for treating such a quite severe illness in the 1700s away for a second that could of course account for both deaths as well. Disclaimer: I am no doctor and this is a fictional story, but if you happen to know more, please enlighten me in the comments!
> 
> If you want to comment on any other aspect of this story, feel free to do so, questions, comments, expressions of critique or whatever else you want to say are greatly appreciated!


End file.
